Of the 14 races of Arcanus and Myrror, you have chosen one. Of the 6 realms of magic, you have chosen a mix and match of up to 11 books and 18 perks, which you may also find later. Each book can be seen as a deck of collectible cards with common spells being almost guaranteed to show up in your potential research opportunities, and some that will elude you until a few games have passed, or wait in some murky dungeon waiting to be found. Your dudes come in "Figures" an abstraction of how many guys there are in a unit. A stone giant is a big bulky bro that hurls 2 giant rocks per combat, but 6 halfling slingers will throw a rock each, occasionally killing the stone giant if you invested enough spell casting time, spell research time, and book picks, or were lucky, because halfling. Spells are powerful ranging from single unit spells, making your meager stack of spearmen just strong or durable enough to last another combat round, to overland enhancements like Crusade, that elevates all of your units, including heroes to a new level of experience, sometimes unattainable by normal means. Each of the 14 races has a quirk, 5 of which are native to the plane of Myrror which can be accessed in a variety of ways, much like the shadow plane of age of wonders 2...which may or may not be inspired by Myrror. All lizardmen units for instance can swim in oceans with no magic or boaty help, while draconian units can fly, which helps them in combat quite a bit. They can't even be attacked by landlubber units with things that can shoot up. Sounds overpowered? Well, not until you look at the cost of draconian units and some other contributing factors. There are a total of 214 spells in the game. Most are useful at some stage of the game. Some throughout. Cities can be planned to be multi purpose, or specialized, but be careful, most buildings require maintenance, even tax improving ones. The wikia page is helpful. Wish I had more characters to rant onwards.
